Be this kid for a second… Scrunch your nose up. Turn down the corners of your mouth. Now, with the most shrill, child-voice you can muster, say “BUT I WANNA!” Really punctuate “wanna” with a foot stomp or a crack in your voice. Struggle with your arms like a 3 year old wrenching free and […]

Somehow, I survived this decadent birthday weekend. Friday was my name day, and Lisa was a wonderful partner, preparing for me all of the junk food I requested: pancakes, coffee cake, blondies, cupcakes, and so on. It was to be the “Big Birthday Diet Cheat,” out-cheating all those smaller indiscretions preceding it, since we have […]

I like lists. One of the lists I keep is a log of my gas purchases. I used to think it would be a pain, but once it became a habit to open my notepad app when I pull up to the pump and take a couple of numbers down (mileage, gas price, number of […]

We hold great respect for those with higher belts. They are our teachers, our best training partners, and the sparring opponents our pride sometimes fears we’ll be paired with. It’s only natural that we seek to become like those we hold in high regard, including their snappy cummerbund. I’m pleased to say that last weekend […]

I don’t listen to hip hop often, but have long appreciated the energy and power of it’s birth and expansion as a culture. Perhaps it will sound strange, but I keep coming back to this comparison of hip hop and jiu jitsu cultures lately, in my mind… Hip hop has its fundamental 4 (or 5, […]

To learn Brazilian Portuguese as a BJJ player might be some kind of final frontier. A number of BJJ players I’ve known have taken an interest in Brazilian Portuguese, and traveling to Brazil to the source, somewhere around brown belt. With the coming trip to Brazil to train BJJ with Pedro Sauer for 10 days […]

Match 1: Greg vs. Dimitri (Men’s No-Gi, Expert, 140-154.9) Dimitri is the youngest brother of what I am going to hopefully coin as a “CT jiu jitsu family dynasty.” He and his two older brothers are all well-respected, and I have had very limited, but memorable, rolling history with his siblings. I learned at the […]

Match 1: Greg vs. Alex (Men’s Gi, Expert, 140-154.9) These were reasons I could have not been nervous… Alex and I have rolled quite a bit together at Plus One, and I used to be able to say “I know his game.” More often than not, I’ve gotten the tap, historically, when we’ve sparred, likely […]

Morning Routine For me, making tournament day very different from other days is like waking up in another life. It inevitably makes me uncomfortable physically and emotionally, like a visitor. Best, in my case, to make it just another day, and just another roll. Nice then, that the morning of the tournament was notably unremarkable. […]